James Wolcott
February 2010 Issue

Schtuppin’ with the Stars

Once a titillating glimpse into the erotic rites of stardom–remember Rob Lowe?–the celebrity sex video became a brand enhancer for the likes of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian. But the current crop, from an Eric Dane three-way to Colin Farrell’s talky romp, is just plain pathetic. Plus: Matt Kapp describes the gruseome ordeal of fact-checking Wolcott’s article.
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In a decade strewn with disappointments, our precious role models have once again let us down. There was a time not so long ago when the news of a celebrity sex video escaping from captivity tapped the sap of the gossip media and gave lonely guys staring at their prison-gray computer screens something to live for, a reason to twitch. Such bootleg recordings not only fed the peephole appetites of infotainment consumers but also served a pedagogical purpose, offering documentary insight into the crucial question of whether celebrities possessed special skills, finesse moves, and finger swirls denied those in the civilian population who have never partied with Charlie Sheen. What stars do in their off-hours is a never-ending source of diddling curiosity to the tabloid sensibility. (Hi, Tiger!) Would an unscripted bout of celebrity sex reveal the usual in-and-out or resemble a Helmut Newton shoot, a deluxe entrée of room-service decadence? Since its inception, Hollywood has been mythologized as the pagan amphitheater of erotic rites, where gods and goddesses disport by the light of the silvery pool. It is one of the sediment layers of Hollywood lore that some of its biggest stars and sex symbols appeared in “smokers” when they were nobodies or bit players. No matter how muddied the remains of this prehistoric footage (where it’s difficult to discern this blob from that blur), there dangled the tantalizing possibility that somewhere lurked the grand prize revealing the secrets of the temple, the Babylonian goods.

The birth moan of the modern celebrity sex tape was probably first packaged for public consumption on Al Goldstein’s Midnight Blue public-access cable series, which presented extensive clips from the Rob Lowe sex video and skeezier artifacts such as Chuck Berry’s alleged bathroom profusions. It took years for Lowe’s career and image to recover from the scandal, not only because it cracked his Clark Kent façade but because one of the young ladies on the receiving end was a minor. In the 80s, when clips from the Lowe tape appeared on the tabloid-TV newsmagazine A Current Affair, which also gave heavy play to the Robert Chambers “Preppy Killer” tape (in which Chambers, who pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the death of Jennifer Levin, mimicked choking a doll for the camera), what crawled out of the woodwork after the Play button was pressed still had the power to shock. There was the underlying shudder that we were witnessing something we weren’t meant to see. Today a celebrity sex video isn’t a stigma that requires penance and smarm removal; it’s a branding device, a platform enhancer, a show reel. Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian would have left little more than lipstick stains in their passing had it not been for the sex videos that lofted them into reality-TV notoriety. Once notoriety has warmed into familiarity, celebrity itself becomes one big Brady Bunch reunion, or a therapy session with Dr. Drew.

In 2009, the celebrity sex video fell victim to an arousal deficit in a news environment preoccupied with survival. Reports that Tila Tequila, the superbly self-promoted MySpace sex gadget and MTV reality-show personality, had a not-suitable-for-work video mothing around were greeted with derisive yawns on Gawker, the Web site whose attitude caused David Denby such dismay in his book Snark. It was difficult to argue with Gawker’s snidey-cakes apathy in this instance. A sex tape from Tequila seemed redundant. Innocent in the ways of her world, I assumed that she spent her leisure hours whipping out sex videos as if they were cupcakes and brownies, dispensing them as hostess gifts, stocking stuffers, and morale boosters for our brave soldiers overseas. Word of a sex tape baring Carmen Electra’s make-out session with a female stripper also produced a ho-hum reaction from the media—hanging out with strippers who hang upside down on the pole is part of the job description of a B-list celebrity. Like many of you primates, I harbored hopes for the threesome video involving Eric Dane, wide-eyed Rebecca Gayheart, and Kari Ann Peniche (who she?), until I discovered there was a hot tub centrally involved. Whence came this idea that hot tubs are sexy? Hot tubs are not sexy, nor is it the height of elegance to puff a cigarette in the hot tub and risk dropping ashes into the very water you’re bubbling in, as Gayheart does. A legal tussle over a sex tape by Jennifer Lopez’s ex-husband allegedly featuring footage of J.Lo being spanked received surprisingly small gossip play. When this nation is no longer compelled by J.Lo’s fruited bottom, we are truly in a Great Recession.

The most sensational kibble of the voyeur season was that blonde-goddess beauty contestant Carrie Prejean, who got ensnared in an ugly fracas over gay marriage during the Miss USA pageant and briefly became a conservative martyr pinup princess as spokesmodel for the National Organization for Marriage, was reportedly the star and auteur of not one (as she originally claimed) but eight solo sex videos, presumably strumming herself like a lute to achieve angelic flight. Steven Hirsch, co-chairman of the porn colossus Vivid Entertainment, which acquired the tapes and sought to distribute them to adult-video stores across America’s troubled mini-malls, popped up on TMZ and similar hallowed broadcasts to exploit the controversy and chase publicity, but the post-revelation ripple effect was paltry compared with the uproar following Penthouse’s publishing explicit photos of Miss America Vanessa Williams in 1984, forcing her to give up her title. Perhaps this collective shrug is a mark of sexual progress, a sign that we have matured as a people, grown beyond the giggly prurience of Mr. Roper on Three’s Company.

No, that can’t be it.

Perhaps, like so much put out by the entertainment industry, the celebrity sex video is riding on the rims of creative exhaustion, scratchily repeating itself. Celebrity sex tapes should be a far more exciting fugitive genre than they are. Their potential has been under-utilized, squandered—proof that even the standards for exhibitionism in contemporary showbiz have gotten lax, sloppy, and degraded. The narcissism that once awed the world with its leather shine and gleaming enamel has let itself slide. Where is the pride of craftsmanship, the concern with proper framing, legible sound quality, and flattering lighting? (In one of the episodes in the X-rated Paris Hilton compilation 1 Night in Paris, we might as well be staring at a possum through night-vision goggles.) I understand that Steadicams aren’t readily available to notables deciding to document what Martin Amis used to call “sack artistry,” but given that nearly all camcorders come with image stabilization there’s no excuse for the shaky-cam Cloverfield motion sickness that pervades the celebrity-sex-vid format like a bad legacy. Trying to watch the Tommy Lee–Pamela Anderson tape is like undergoing astronaut training and throwing up in your space helmet.

Equally queasy and deep into the existential dregs are the Tom Sizemore videos, so closed-off and entropic that they’re like outtakes from an Abel Ferrara movie, a mortality exercise with the camera as crypt keeper. When you consider what a forceful, cagey, watchful presence Sizemore was in Saving Private Ryan, Heat, and TV’s Robbery Homicide Division, the human wastage here is horrible and very unsexy. Colin Farrell’s monologue-heavy romp is a disgrace to his Irish heritage, which gave us Yeats, Joyce, Edna O’Brien, Seamus Heaney, and the syncopated jigging of Riverdance; all that melodic eloquence in the collective bloodstream, and all he can spout is louche gibberish. (His unprincely monologue did inspire a hilarious staged reading of the X-rated transcript by Shakespearean-trained actors who relished every foul vowel.) And then there are the sex videos dribbling from the far end of the court, dubious contributions from the former wrestler Chyna, Dustin Diamond (dorky “Screech” from Saved by the Bell), and Baywatch lifeguard Gena Lee Nolin, sad footnotes to careers that barely were.

The decline of the celebrity sex video mirrors the diminishment in Hollywood film of overt sex, which has migrated to pay cable, while mainstream movies revert to prolonged rhapsodies of renunciation such as the Twilight series and the dependable tent pole of Sandra Bullock acting spunky. The porn industry itself is on the edge of dissolution, ravaged by digital piracy that has de-monetized and democratized porn across myriad free Web sites where any amateur in a homemade video can attract as many glazed eyeballs as the glossiest face on a DVD cover. The very phrase “porn star” seems so 90s now, caked with dried mascara. We have moved on. To where? To wherever the all-devouring Internet takes us next.

James Wolcott is a Vanity Fair contributing editor.